"Future scenario thinking" is a technique developed by theatre director Zoe Svendsen to imagine the cities of tomorrow. In an interview with Dezeen, she says architects could use it to design better urban futures.
Svendsen, who is director of performing arts company Metis, uses future scenario thinking as a tool for conceptualising alternative realities.
"Often when you start from the present moment, all you can see are obstacles. It can induce despair," she told Dezeen.
The technique involves bringing together experts, policy-makers and actors, and asking them to collectively explore fictional situations. The idea is that, freed from the constraints of reality, people come up with more radical ideas for change.
"Fleshing out" alternative futures "If you concentrate instead on the story of how it could be if those obstacles were not there, and try and flesh out the reality of living in that alternative environment, then that process yields insights that in turn enable other ways of doing things," Svendsen explained.
"These might well turn out to be already doable, even if not in quite the way you first assumed."
Zoe Svendsen, director of Metis, developed the technique "future scenario thinking"
For the Oslo Architecture Triennale, Svendsen worked with groups in London and Oslo to come up with specific visions for how these cities might change by 2040. The actors then improvised characters to inhabit these fict...